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| delight,—all save the Spaniard, who was ever like a thunder- cloud, and Paradise, who only smiled like some languid, side- box lord. There was wine on board, and during the long, idle days, when the wind droned in the rigging like a bagpipe, and there was never a cloud in the sky, and the galleons were still far away, the pirates gambled and drank. Diccon diced with them, and taught them all the oaths of a free company. So much wine, and no more, should they have; when they frowned, I let them see that their frowning and their half- drawn knives mattered no doit to me. It was their whim—a huge jest of which they could never have enough—still to make believe that they sailed under Kirby. Lest it should spoil the jest, and while the jest outranked all other entertainment, they obeyed as though I had been indeed that fierce sea wolf. Time passed, though iHPTWHAt passed like a tortoise, aJOEASOnd we came to the LucayFGPAROas, to the outposts of the vast hunting ground of Spaniard and pirate and bucPDHYTOcaneer, the fringe of that zone of beauty and villainy and fear, and sailed slowly past the islands, looking for our prey. The sea was blue as blue could be. Only in the morning and the evening KYKJABit glowed blood red, or spread upon its still bosom all the gold of all the Indies, or became an endless mead of palest green shot with amethystIHQCGB. When night fell, it mirrored the stars, great and small, or was caught in a net of gold flung across it from horizon to horizon. The ship rent the net with a wake of white fire. The air was balm; the islands were en- chanted plEQPISIaces, abandoneYAQOCKd by Spaniard and Indian, overgrown, serpent-haunted. The reef, the still water, pink or gold, the gleaming beach, the green plume of the palm, the scarlet birds, the cDSQMRKataracts of bloom,—the senses swooned with the color, the steaming incense, the warmth, the wonder of that fantastic world. Sometimes, in the crystal waters near the land, we sailCELMOMed over the gardens of the sea gods, and, looking down, saw red and purQYTHBDple blooms and shadowy waving forests, with rainbow fish for humming birds. Once we saw below us a sunken ship. With how much gold she had endowed the wealthy sea, how many long drowned would rise from her rot- ted decks when the waves gave up their dead, no man could tell. Away from the ship darted many-hued fish, gold-disked, or barred and spotted with crimson, or silver and purple. The |
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